Breezy remembers leaving the party: the warm, wet grass under her feet, her cheek still stinging from a slap to her face. But when she wakes up, scared and pulling dirt from her mouth, a year has passed and she can’t explain how.

Nor can she explain the man lying at her grave, dead from her touch, or why her heartbeat comes and goes. She doesn’t remember who killed her or why. All she knows is that she’s somehow conscious—and not only that, she’s able to sense who around her is hiding a murderous past.

Haunted by happy memories from her life, Breezy sets out to find answers in the gritty, threatening world to which she now belongs—where killers hide in plain sight, and a sinister cult is hunting for strange creatures like her. What she discovers is at once empowering, redemptive, and dangerous.

Quick & Dirty: An odd and unique tale about a girl who has returned from the dead and her search for answers about herself and what happened to her.

As soon as I read the first sentence in this book, I knew that it would be dark and creepy. Shallow Graves is a wonderfully atmospheric book that reads more like a horror revenge story than anything else. However, there is a side-plot that I thought distracted too much from the main story. Additionally, after turning the last page, I was left with so many questions, I’m disappointed that there won’t be a sequel.

Breezy was a surprisingly relatable character. She does occasionally have deep, philosophical thoughts but overall she felt like a normal teenage girl who just happened to have once been dead. And who now somehow has the power to spot murderers and kill them with her touch. It almost felt like there were two sides of her – the normal one and the one that came out when she was around murderers. Most of this book was about her seeking answers and trying to find out what she was, which led to the discovery of other paranormal creatures.

The secondary characters were hit or miss for me. Some of them were pretty one-dimensional, despite having decent backstories, while others, namely the ghouls, felt incredibly alive. There was one character toward the end that I absolutely loved, she was the creepiest part of the novel for me. I felt shivers down my spine during those scenes. I really liked that I was never sure which characters Breezy could trust and how I was sometimes wrong.

There were times when I would laugh out loud and times when I was truly afraid for Breezy. The middle of the book is about Breezy seeking out answers, sometimes in incredibly dangerous ways. I did feel as if the middle and the end were disjointed though, the switch back from the deeply paranormal happened a little too quickly. That being said, I thought the ending was one of the strongest parts of the book. It was beautifully written and had a wonderful message. I would have rated this book higher but I was left with too many unanswered questions from the middle portion of the plot.

If you’re looking for a good, creepy YA paranormal story, definitely check this one out. This is one of the rare standalone books where I’m hoping that there will be a sequel, partially to find out more about the world and partially because I liked the characters so much.

Notable Scene:

Maybe there was something wrong with the fear center of my brain. Maybe it had been damaged when I died. Maybe a worm got in there during all that time I was in the ground and chewed up one important knot of neurons, the kind responsible for warning the rest of me not to get into cars with murderers or accept help from psychotic cult preachers or go home with monsters who eat human corpses.

In quiet moments, when I held my breath and listened, I imagined I could hear the worms still digging around, breaking connections any normal person’s brain should be able to make.

I had never known this world existed. I hadn’t asked for any part of it. I didn’t want it.

But you can’t go back to not knowing something once you’ve been thrown in the middle of it.